Arrow Shifting Allegiances review S6 E20

Shifting Allegiances had some good, some great and one poorly timed subplot. Overall, Arrow feels like it’s on the right track and has a direction as the season winds down.

Oliver reached out to Anatoly to try and bring him back to the good guy table. Of all the shattered relationships in Arrow, this one remains the most devastating. There’s a clear respect, love and sense of betrayal on both sides. But who would Anatoly side with after Oliver makes several great points about Diaz’s loyalties to his allies. But Anatoly is still salty about Oliver’s betrayal so it’s a toss up.

Anatoly was still clearly on the undecided side when he brings Oliver to Diaz. Starting to brim with overconfidence, The Dragon agrees to fight Oliver one on one in a loser leaves town match…fight. Naturally, the guy trained by the League of Assassins eventually gets the upper hand and has Diaz in a submission move. But then Diaz goes full heel and pulls out a knife.

The use of a foreign object is pretty shady, but accomplishes Oliver’s goal of showing Anatoly that Diaz isn’t honorable. That was a risky play with no real guarantees of victory. No wonder Oliver needs Team Arrow if this is his decision making process after two weeks.

[irp]

Diaz has other plans for Oliver though and has his police squad goons arrest Oliver. I’m still struggling with this notion that the entire police force is on Diaz’s take. And why Diaz is still so interested in going through all these machinations when he already has all the power in Star City. On the plus side, Kirk Acevedo is really shining these last few weeks.

The attorney Jean Loring Easter Egg was cool, but I’d be far more interested if she hooks up with Ray Palmer. This kinda seems like a random Arrowverse throwaway instead of creating a genuine connection with an established character.

Black Siren’s will she?/won’t she? subplot continued as not Lauren had her partnership with Diaz revealed to Quentin. It’s hard to buy her newfound fear of Diaz after last week when she happily carried out his grunt work and constantly goaded him on.

Was she really that terrified of him burning his childhood bully? Quentin being Season 6 Quentin refuses to exhaust his bucket of second chances for Evil Laurel. The two strike a deal to protect each other from Diaz, which has to end with Laurel getting killed, right? Or would Quentin’s death be the final catalyst to make Black Siren a hero? Most heroes need some tragic backstory…

Rene is back! Did anyone miss him? Anyone? How about you, Hoss? No? OK, moving right along. Rene returned only to now start having PTSD from being shot off the rooftop. The timing of this felt incredibly suspect as Rene carried on just fine and was laid up much longer after going Hatchet Man on Oliver. It seems kinda silly at this point in the season to bench Rene after he’s been away so long.

Diggle ended up teaming with the Outsiders as he led an ARGUS mission. This isn’t a terrible place for Diggle at this point, but I kinda wish he’d taken Curtis’ offer up to join them. Diggle leading that team would make for a much better play especially since that squad had a fresh dynamic.

File Closed: Shifting Allegiances began setting up the steps for Diaz’s downfall and the reunion of Team Arrow. But is that such a worthwhile goal any more?

Rating: 8 out of 10

Photo Credit: The CW